Tomorrow's Bleeding
by Damion Starr
Summary: Max has just signed his own death certificate.  Slash: Jensen/Cougar, Prompt: Shattered, Rating for disturbing imagery.  I only own Jenna and Beka Jensen.


Jensen threw himself out of the van before it even came to a complete stop, racing up the sidewalk and slamming himself through the front door. "Jensen! Get back here!" Clay ordered, but the tech had already disappeared into the house. Without a second thought Cougar followed, afraid of what trouble his teammate was running into the middle of. He heard Clay yell after him as well, but ignored it.

Cougar stopped in the front hallway of the familiar home, eyes and ears carefully taking everything in. Nothing seemed out of place from the last time they had been here, but he couldn't shake the cold twining down his spine. He heard Jensen's footsteps on the stairs, then on the second floor, moving down the hallway and pausing every few steps as the hacker checked each room. Dark shapes interuppted the sunlight pouring in through the open door, crowding around his own shadow on the hardwood floor.

"Find anything?" Pooch spoke first. Cougar shook his head, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"Jenna? You here?" Clay finally called out and they all reflexively held their breaths, straining to hear any kind of response. All they heard was Jensen finally reaching the end of the hallway, where Cougar remembered Jenna's room was.

"COUGAR!" Jensen's voice, high and frantic, made them all jump, and Cougar was halfway up the stairs before the others shook off the shock.

"Jensen?" Cougar called back, heart thrumming in his chest. He heard the others clambering up the staircase behind him.

The hallway was empty, but when Cougar ran to the end he saw Jensen in his sister's bedroom. Cougar froze in the doorway, eyes wide and jaw clenched painfully tight. He grasped the doorframe so hard his arms shook under the strain. Clay, Pooch and Aisha came up behind him and went silent immediately. He didn't have to look to know that their eyes were fixed on the image in front of them.

Jenna's room was neat as always, decorated in deep purple and white. On the opposite wall, between two white framed windows, dark blood splattered across the paint, looking nearly black. There was more blood on the wall behind the headboard of the bed, staining a framed painting of Kildare, Ireland that Jenna had done while abroad, as well as framed photos of her and Jensen in their youth, Jensen and baby Beka, Jensen and Cougar in the backyard, Jensen and The Losers, Jensen and Jensen and Jensen. But beneath this shrine to her baby brother, her daughter, and the family she had adopted in Clay, Pooch, and even Aisha, was Jenna herself.

She lay on her back, one hand resting on her stomach while the other laid at her side. She wore jeans and a purple tank top, feet bare. Dogtags, recovered from the charred ruins of a helicoptor by the U.S. government, rested in the hollow between her breasts. She had worn them constantly since receiving them, and hadn't stopped even after discovering her brother and his team were alive. One tag on the chain was that of Jake Jensen, while the other was Carlos Alvarez'. Cougar had no next of kin, and when Jenna had found that out she'd insisted he list her as his emergency contact.

Cougar never told her how happy that'd made him.

Beside her was little Beka. Well, she wasn't so little. She was eight, after all. But the team had known her since she was a gangly little six year old, tripping over her own feet like her uncle and not quite grown into her long limbs. She was the spitting image of her blonde-haired, blue-eyed mother and uncle. She even had her own matching pair of dogtags, one of Jensen's and one of Cougar's, draped around her neck. Beka's hand was in Jenna's, their fingers entwined. It was a lovely image.

Except that both pairs of clear eyes were wide open, staring glassily at the ceiling. Their mouths were slightly open, frozen in screams that had been silenced quickly. Underneath Jenna's hand on her stomach was a dark, wet circle, her shirt soaked with blood that had also soaked into the comforter beneath her. Her cheeks, now pale and bloodless, were etched with tracks of tears.

Little Beka's slim throat was sliced, a red gash from one side to the other. Blood had dried on the slope of her narrow chest, giving the grim illusion that she was wearing a red shirt. Her face was also decorated with the faint lines of tears.

Cougar heard Pooch retch behind him, then run to the bathroom. The sniper's stomach turned in sympathy, but it was forgotten when his eyes moved from the terrible sight before him to the shaking blonde standing at the foot of the bed.

Jensen's mouth was moving, but no sound came from him. His eyes were wide and unblinking, fixed on the last of his biological family. One hand hovered in front of him, trembling like a leaf in the wind. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, seemingly unable to decide whether to move closer or away.

"Someone will die for this." Aisha hissed at Cougar's back before all but fleeing from the scene. He heard her open the sliding glass door on the first floor that led out to the backyard, then close it just a little too hard.

After a moment's silence, Clay laid his hand on Cougar's shoulder. It said everything he needed it to say before Clay left to check on the others.

It said "He needs you".

Cougar swallowed, blinking against the tears that suddenly welled in his eyes, and forced himself to cross the bedroom's threshold. Inside the walls, Jensen's breathing seemed far too loud, just this side of panicked. Cougar touched his arm gently, looking at Jensen's face rather than the horror on the bed.

"Jensen," He whispered, unable to talk much louder.

"Jenna?" The younger man choked out, tears spilling over. "Beka?" His voice cracked, and Cougar felt his heart crack with it.

"Jensen, let's go somewhere else." Cougar swallowed around the lump forming in his throat.

"Say something, Jenna," Jensen took a shaky step closer to the bed. "Please, Jenna. Talk to me."

"Jensen, she-" He couldn't finished the sentence. His mind scrambled for different words, anything else that he could possibly say without actually lying.

"She won't talk to me, Coug. Why won't she talk to me?" Cougar gaped at his friend for a moment, stunned. "Jenna? Jenna, please, whatever I did, I'm sorry. Please just talk to me."

The sniper kept staring at his friend. He didn't know how to handle this. Grief he could handle. Rage, despair, any of those he can deal with, but this was just insanity. He was holding the shattered pieces of his best friend in his hands and he just didn't know how to put Jensen back together.

And a small, merciful part of him wasn't sure if he wanted to put him back together.

"Beka? Beka, why is Mommy mad? Was it something I did?"

"Jensen, please," Cougar breathed, feeling himself unraveling as well.

"C'mon, Beks, it's Uncle Jen. I know I did something stupid but-"

"Jensen,"

"I didn't mean to hurt Mommy's feelings, really-"

"Jensen, listen to me,"

"Can you just tell her to talk to-"

"Jensen, she is DEAD!" Cougar finally screamed, spinning the computer technician toward him and grasping his arms tight to keep him in place. Tears spilled over Cougar's cheeks, and he let them. "Jenna's dead! Beka's dead! They're both DEAD!" Cougar saw the pain in his blue eyes, saw the very moment that he stabbed Jensen in the heart, but he was like a wounded animal, lashing out in pain and fear. "They're dead, carinó." He finished softly, forcing himself to endure the slight betrayal he saw in Jensen's expression.

"No," Jensen breathed, shaking his head dazedly. He took a step back and Cougar let him go, lowering his arms to his sides. "No, you're- no,"

"I'm sorry, amor," Cougar gasped, fighting to keep himself under control. "Madre de dios, I'm so sorry."

Jensen wrenched his gaze away from Cougar to the bed. His eyes widened and he began to hyperventilate as if seeing the scene for the first time. "Jenna?" Before Cougar could stop him Jensen sat on the edge of the bed and grasped his sister's cold shoulders. "Jenna? Jenna, look at me, okay? Please, just look at me," He shook her, and she moved like a ragdoll. Cougar moved close and touched Jensen's arm, trying to get his attention silently. The hacker just kept shaking his dead sister. "Jenna? Jenna, wake up. C'mon, wake up!" Jensen shook her hard, making her head snap forward than back bonelessly. "Jenna!"

Cougar finally closed the distance between them, wrapping his arms around Jensen's chest and pulling him to his feet. Jensen let his sister fall back on the bed to claw at his friend's hands.

"Get off me, Cougar! Jenna! Beka! WAKE UP!"

The sniper had to use all of his strength to drag the larger man away. It didn't help that Jensen was throwing his arms and legs around like a child with a tantrum, throwing him off balance.

"Jenna," Jensen gave one last anguished cry, then went limp suddenly, dragging both down to the floor. Cougar grunted when his back hit the wall and Jensen fell against his chest. He felt the younger man shaking against him. Cougar loosened his grip around Jensen's chest and moved one arm to loop around his shoulders, pressing him closer. The Spaniard buried his nose in the blonde hair above Jensen's ear.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," Cougar whispered to him, unconsciously stroking Jensen's chest, shoulder, up his neck to his cheek.

"Jenna. Beka." Jensen whimpered, curling into Cougar's embrace. "They're gone, Cougs. They're gone,"

"I know," Cougar threaded his fingers through Jensen's hair and they turned their heads simultaneously until Cougar's mouth was against Jensen's forehead in something like a kiss.

"Tell me he'll pay for this, Coug. Promise me that he's gonna be bled dry for what he's done. Promise me." Jensen lifted his head and looked into Cougar's dark eyes, his expression one of a man barely holding it together. He'd just managed to put his own broken pieces back together but the cracks were still visible, still raw and aching. Cougar cupped the back of his head and pulled him into a kiss.

"Prometo, mi amor. Prometo." Cougar whispered against his lips.


End file.
